Guy Pearce to release first solo album

Australian actor Guy Pearce is preparing to fullfill his longtime musical ambitions by releasing his first solo album.

The “Memento” star, 46, has long dreamed of making music but he put his plans on the backburner after seeing the savaging some actors-turned-singers receive from critics.

The closest Pearce came to launching a singing career was recording the soundtrack to his 1999 movie “A Slipping-Down Life,” in which he plays a small-town musician struggling to make it big, but he is now set to release his first solo album in November.

He tells Australia’s Sydney Daily Telegraph, “Every time I did an interview in the late ’80s and early ’90s and mentioned I made music the journalist would roll their eyes and go ‘Not another f— actor who’s going to release a single.’ I would extremely apologetically say ‘No, of course not! I’d never inflict that on the world.’ I allowed that narrow minded belief to drive everything for years. Although maybe people were just sick of actors making music. …

“As we all know back in the ’80s a couple of other actors I worked with all went out and released singles, then a few more did. I was very conscious of how that was received. It wasn’t always in a positive way. I was very conscious of not wanting to seem like I was jumping on the bandwagon or annoy people because I wanted to do music myself. So I’d make music but in my loungeroom, or playing with friends, it wasn’t public.”

A number of Pearce’s former co-stars in Australian soap opera “Neighbours” went on to launch music careers in the 1980s, including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, and Stefan Dennis.